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As a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer was on his way to the coal region to scout ideas for a film about working-class America, all hell was breaking loose in Shenandoah.

David Turnley remembered the call he received en route from New York City to Schuylkill County.

“As I was heading to the coal region, a friend of mine called and said, ‘You should go to Shenandoah, Pa., where four of the town’s star sons, all straight-A students and football players, have been charged with killing an undocumented Mexican immigrant,” Turnley recalled. “I thought, ‘Well, I guess I should go to Shenandoah.’ ”

He stayed two years, filming, shooting photographs and documenting the events surrounding the beating death of Luis Eduardo Ramirez Zavala.